When I go to where I was getting excellent parts in movies I may have taken a few too soon, too anxious to go back to work and to anxious to make another film and to succeed more.
— Dabney Coleman
There is something about New York City that in and of itself is so theatrical hat I use to think... I use to feel when I walked out of my apartment on the way to school or anywhere that I was walking out on stage.
No not pigeon holed me as an actor, or as a character, or as to what I could do - but what I would do... and the fact is the things you don't do are almost as important as as the things that you do.
I work with Sally and I can see Sally doing that. She is very aggressive. Very fun loving and charming... and pushy in a very competitive way and a very healthy way and a very good actress.
I think is very beneficial to relax yourself so that when you are doing it you are not staggering for lines and your concentration is not on what I am going to say - but the scene itself, the character that you are talking to.
I didn't have any extra money. But I can't say that I had a hard early career.
But it was this tough little character part that I was playing, a very funny little guy that I invented over a weekend, because I realized I was not contributing to the humor of this thing. And I had to do something.
And it just made me realize again because I have know it for some time, that you never get comfortable in this. No matter who you are. No matter who... how successful you are.
Well Sid Pollack was... He was I would say probably, probably the most influential on me.
The next night I got on an airplane, and flew to New York and looked into acting schools. Four or five acting schools. One of which was the Neighborhood Playhouse, which I started at six months there after.
It takes a lot of energy to teach.
I was very lucky in as much as I played a lot of tennis.
I have worked with some great directors.
I did two or three plays every summer.
But it is a hard, it's a hard profession teaching acting.
To tell you the truth I am hard put to think of anyone who's career was affected significantly by making all those phone calls and I must be wrong. I must be wrong! Because it has just got to pay off!
The career doesn't get any easier. A career stays tough.
I'm convinced that the place, if you have your druthers, to go to have that experience is New York City.
I think that you get something for your acting from almost anything you do.
I have a theory about that, if you have to say something, if you have encourage for one second a prospective acting student - he should not go in to acting.
But movies as much as anything developed what I thought was right and wrong, what was honorable, what wasn't, what was funny what wasn't... what had some depth to it, what didn't.
But I did make some money doing commercials. I did fourteen in one year.
